Regret
by TMBlue
Summary: COMPLETE! Lying awake at Shell Cottage, Ron reflects on all of his past regrets, and the newest and biggest one that now overshadows all the rest. Set mid-DH before the chapter "The Silver Doe"...


**Regret**

What if life ended right here? What if tonight was the last night when a new memory had the chance to be created in my mind? What if time paused and I was left here with only the memories of all that I had done and of all that I never had the courage to do? Could I live with myself, paused infinitely with all of this regret?

There are things I could have changed. I always knew that. There were things I should have done differently, should have altered as they were happening, before they took shape. Several years ago, my regrets were simple in nature. I wished I could have stood up to Fred and George, maybe pulled a prank or two on them for a change. I wished I could have come up with a wittier remark to one of Draco Malfoy's sneers. There were times when I could have been braver, could have been smarter, could have been wiser. There were things I could have said or done, things I thought of after the fact that would have been better received.

Then fourth year arrived, and with it, the first regret of my life that would make all the others seem silly and much less significant. I could have asked her to the ball. I really could have. But how can you do something when you don't even realize you want to until after you've lost your chance? That night, at the ball, I knew what I regretted having never done. I knew I should have seen it earlier, should have stopped her from going with Viktor bloody Krum, should have changed my circumstances. Maybe if she'd gone with me she wouldn't have such high standards. After all, I could never and will never be able to compete with someone like him, will I? But all of that was only assuming that she would have gone with me, and her speech at the end of our argument may have suggested that she would have. But with no way of knowing, I couldn't really blame myself completely for what I had done, could I? If she had said no, would that not have been worse than what, in reality, had happened that night? Perhaps...

But then the Department of Mysteries happened. For the first time in my life I felt regret from overwhelming guilt... what I could have done for Hermione and for Harry had I been there for them... regret every time I looked down at the scars on my arms. And worst of all, guilt over what might have happened differently had I been able to help Harry, had I been able to be there and change those little details about a moment that can effect every other moment to come. And perhaps, just perhaps, Sirius needn't have died at all. Guilt for his death, overwhelming and powerful, and it would weigh on my mind, on my spirit, for the rest of my life, I assumed...

Then, regret over spoiling the one perfect thing that I could have had, or had fooled myself into believing I might have had if things hadn't gone so horribly wrong... Viktor Krum, as always, got in the way again of something I could have had. But blaming him would only take me so far. The moment I saw Hermione's face as I accidentally entered the deserted classroom with Lavender on the night Lavender and I first kissed, I knew it was all my fault. Hermione's tears - my fault. Her pain - my fault. And every time I ever hurt her came crashing down onto me like a lead weight. And there was nothing I could do to change it. So I hid it, covered it, and ignored it. Tried not to notice how I was hurting her more with each passing day, and in doing so, I built up more regret and remorse than I could have ever imagined feeling over a single relationship, if you can even call what Lavender and I had a relationship... And in the end, when I knew Hermione had forgiven me of everything before I'd even had to ask, guilt piled on top of me even heavier than before, guilt about being poisoned, about taking what I now felt was the easy way out. After all, it seemed so much easier to almost die in order to get Hermione back than it would have been if I'd had to actually apologize to her for real, had to actually be brave for a change and do the right thing... and as soon as I was well again, that guilt began to eat away at me, so much so that I knew I had to apologize to her one day, to set the record straight, to tell her why I had really gone for Lavender in the first place. Viktor Krum, like usual, had gotten in the way of everything else, and Hermione deserved the truth from me. She always did, and I so rarely gave it to her.

But now, lying in this warm bed in Shell Cottage, it feels more lonely and hollow and cold than endless nights in a tent in the middle of the woods with no food could ever feel. Because here I am without her, and the one regret that now overshadows and outweighs everything else I've ever done has become almost too much to handle...

I have replayed it over and over, the image burned so clearly and strongly into my mind that every time I close my eyes, I can see it and feel it and hear it... Her cries as I left the tent that night, her tear streaked face, her mouth opened in shock and horror, the way her forehead scrunched up in pain, her voice begging and pleading and crying out to me to stop, to come back, not to leave her... The last thing I saw and heard as I turned on the spot... Her hair whipping around a tree by the tent, her face covered in tears and rain, and the pop of my Disapparation muffling the sound of her anguished scream of my name as I vanished.

How can I live with what I've done? How can I live with a regret so huge and powerful that it casts a pitch black shadow over every other thing in my life that I've ever felt guilt or regret or pain because of?

The things I never said, the things I never did... they haunt me now each night. I imagine what I should have done, a scenario in which I never left her side but returned to the tent, or never got into the fight with Hermione and Harry in the first place that night. I wake up the next morning in the tent and look over at Hermione as she wakes at the same time. I tell her I need to speak to her, that it's very important and to come outside and stand in the rising sun with me so I can tell her without Harry overhearing me, even though he's still asleep and snoring softly in the bunk above mine.

"I love you," I tell her. "I have for so long." I don't know how to tell her exactly how I feel, but I know that I can show her if she wants me to. "I don't want to spend another moment of my life without you in it." And I kiss her before she has the chance to respond so I'll know what it feels like to kiss the only person in the whole world who will ever make me feel this way, the only person I ever have or will ever love this way... and even if she rejects me, even if she is angry with me for kissing her before even letting her reply to what I have just confessed, I will never regret this. Not on my life. Because knowing what it's like the other way around, knowing how it would be if I had left that night, left her crying my name and pleading with me to stay with her, well, knowing that, I can never regret another moment of my life. And this one thing, this confession, the kiss... it's all that I live for. And once it's done, I can go on, I can accept whichever outcome may arrive with my confession... her admittance of the same feelings or her rejection of the concept and consequential straining of our friendship because of the awkward state that would surely surround us after a confession and a denial of returned feelings.

But I do regret it because it didn't happen that way, did it? I did leave that night. I left her. I left _us_.

And now all I want is to hear her voice, to know that she's alright, that I have a chance at forgiveness someday, that this isn't the last night I'll live to see, that I'll have a second chance (perhaps it's more like a fourth or fifth chance now)...

But lying here on my bed at Shell Cottage, all I've got is this damned Deluminator. The lights go out, the lights come on. Out, on, out...

Maybe it's just a nervous habit now, something to pass the time, to occupy my hands when I wish they could be somewhere else...

Click. Click. Then I put the Deluminator back in my pocket…

All I want is to hear her voice...

"Ron..."


End file.
